


temperature control

by anthropologicalhands



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Morning After, Post 3x07, the post-squirrel leap morning after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropologicalhands/pseuds/anthropologicalhands
Summary: Rebecca Bunch cursing in his shower is not usually part of Nathaniel’s Monday morning, but he can adjust.





	temperature control

**Author's Note:**

> author's notes: We all know that Rebecca jumped Nathaniel on a weeknight, right? That must have been an interesting day at the office after.

Nathaniel wakes to the click of a door closing.

His first, fuzzy thought is that Rebecca ran away again. Except the sound isn’t quite right, and when he sits up against the headboard he can still see her purse by the front door and her shoes off to the side of the bed.

So where did she go…

The sound of running water sputters to life in the bathroom, and there’s an immediate, indignant yelp, hastily muffled.

Nathaniel grins, a burst of amusement suffusing quickly with relief.

Ah, there she is.

The empty side of the bed is still warm; he’s impressed she managed to sneak out without waking him. The last time they had done this he’d been aware of every time she shifted in the night. Though considering how late it had been when they finally fell asleep—

That brought forth a sudden, pressing concern: what time was it now?

There are many words that come to mind when he describes Rebecca, but ‘timely’ is not one of them. Nathaniel scrambles out of bed to check his phone, urgency overtaking dignity.

The digital clock informs him that he still has another thirty minutes before his alarm goes off. But going back to sleep seems pointless after the momentary panic has put his internal systems on full alert.  Instead, he pulls on the sweats and shirt from the night before and goes to stand before the bathroom door.

“Rebecca?” He knocks gently on the door with the back of his hand. “Everything all right?”

She mutters something incomprehensible: it sounds vaguely obscene.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

“Fine!” Rebecca’s voice finally squeaks through the door, over the sound of the shower spray. “Be out in a minute!”

Nathaniel nods before he remembers that she won’t be able to see it.

“Don’t worry about it. Take your time.”

He slips away from the door and heads to the kitchen, looking for something to do while getting his facial muscles under control. He never has breakfast, but he’s pretty sure that his guest does, so he should try to see if there is anything in his fridge.

He’s found oranges and not much else when Rebecca emerges from the bathroom, barefoot but otherwise fully dressed and pinching the last of the excess moisture from her hair. She catches his eye and smiles ruefully.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he returns, completely unable to help the answering smile that the sight of her draws from him.

“Did I wake you up?” She crosses through the apartment, pausing to pick up her purse, bending to retrieve it from the doorway.

When she looks up and catches his answering nod, she winces. “Ah, shit. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Was everything okay in there?”

“I ran into a problem with your shower panel.”

He frowns, confused. “What happened? Do I have to call the landlord?”

She shakes her head, slipping the purse strap over her shoulder. “Nothing like that. I was trying to get the water warm and accidentally turned on the jets instead and got sprayed in the face. Speaking of which, I didn’t even know it was possible to have jets in a shower, so what the hell is _that_ about?”

He laughs –he can’t help it. Rebecca tries to glower at him, but her mouth is more curved into a smile than a frown, so he doubts she minds all that much.

She approaches the kitchen counter and braces herself against the edge but leans forward, towards him, chin tilted stubbornly upwards. “But seriously. What kind of space age bachelor aesthetic are you going for here with the fancy shower options? That’s too many fiddly bits to keep track of. Especially when we might have another drought, why would you want all these weird dials when all you need is a temperature control? Maybe a detachable shower nozzle.” She narrows her eyes at him, smirking. “Or maybe that’s just me. You probably wouldn’t use that the same way I would.”

Nathaniel rolls his eyes, amused. He puts his hands down on the other side of the counter, leaning a little more forward so he can look down at her. “I’m sorry, let me get this straight: after knocking on my door in the middle of the night and jumping me with maybe two seconds of warning, today you’re complaining that my shower has too many options? That’s just rude.”

Rebecca has her lip between her teeth, though her shoulders shake with suppressed laughter. He considers leaning a little further and closing the gap between them, but she seems to be playing it casual, and he doesn’t want to come off too strong.

“Thirsty?”

He moves away from the counter, and gestures towards the sink.

“Huh?” From his peripheral vision he sees her give herself a little shake. “Oh, sure.”

He fills two glasses and turns back around to find Rebecca watching him, now resting her elbows on the countertop, twiddling her thumbs. He slides the glass across the counter; she reaches out and accepts it with a quiet ‘thank you’ 

“In all seriousness,” he says. “You could have woken me up. I wouldn’t have minded. Might have just joined you, what with the impending drought,” he adds, with a small smirk.

She smiles, but the playful glint in her eyes is not quite there. She falters a bit, dropping her gaze and studying the black marble countertop instead, tracing an uneven gray skein right by the edge. 

“Well, you have work, and I know you like to get in early. I was trying to be considerate.” She smiles self-deprecatingly. “Didn’t seem to work.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” he insists.

She nods, still looking down at her hands. It’s not easy to gauge Rebecca, not when she doesn’t want to be read. She’s drawn back, agitated about something, but he can’t tell what.

The nervous energy is throwing him off—it’s such a far cry of the woman who has tackled him in his office during his first week, tried to seduce him in his doorway a month ago and who was just in his bed an hour ago.

Unease twists his stomach. She had said that sex wouldn’t affect anything about her recovery, but maybe it has. Maybe she’s already realized it and wants to escape. She already has her purse, after all.

“Rebecca?” He starts, and pauses, trying to think the best way to phrase it. “Did you need to leave, earlier? Am I keeping you from something?”

“What?” Rebecca’s head snaps back up, eyes wide. “I wasn’t…no, absolutely not. I didn’t want to wake you, but I wasn’t going to just skip out. I have better manners than that, most of the time.”

She mutters the last part, dragging a hand through her hair, the damp ends of her curls bobbing and sticking to her skin; she tucks them back behind her ear.

He's genuinely worried now.

“Rebecca, was this okay?”

“Of course it was, _better_ than okay, really. I’m just…feeling kind of guilty.” She holds up a hand, palm forward, already anticipating his next question. “ _Not_ about the sex.”

“About what then?” he prompts, genuinely confused.

She chews her lip before answering.

“About the fact that it’s Monday morning, you’re usually in the office by eight and I definitely wasn’t thinking about that when I came over last night. I mean, I don’t even have jet lag as an excuse, ‘cause I’m going from east to west and that’s always an easier shift. So. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Well, I am.”

“Don’t be,” says Nathaniel firmly. “I mean, yeah, you could have hurt my back, jumping on me like that, but I remembered to bend my knees, so...”

She laughs at that, the same way she did a few days, like she hasn’t got a care in the world. She stands a little taller, her shoulders relaxing. The tension unknots in his stomach, and he doesn’t hide his own smile.

“Are you hungry? I have some fruit,” he says, changing the subject, grounding it back in the now. “Not much else though.”

“Nathaniel, it’s fine. You weren’t expecting a house guest, and I wasn’t, uh, originally planning on spending the night—”

He raises an eyebrow at her, skeptical.

“You fell asleep before I did.”

He takes some pleasure at seeing her flush and glare half-heartedly at him.

“It wasn’t _that_ late,” says Rebecca, defensive. “Your stupid bed is just really, really comfortable. I don’t know how you ever wake up so early in the morning.”

“It’s called a work ethic.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling again, and he takes it as permission to test the waters, circle back to their earlier (non-)conversation.

“You didn’t really answer my question.”

She tilts her head, curious. “Which one?”

“About your therapy thing. And…us. Having sex,” he gestures between them. “Where does it fit into everything?”

“Oh,” she considers. “It’s a judgment call, honestly. I guess you could also call it part of my homework.”

Nathaniel squints at her. “Excuse me? I’m homework?”

She laughs.

“Before I went to Buffalo, my therapist told me that I was trying too hard to be perfect, and not, you know, living life and making mistakes,” she explains, tracing her fingers across the marble again in careless spirals. “Not that this was a mistake. Um, it’s more of a learning to trust my instincts kind of thing? I do a lot of, seeing things in black and white. This is Good and that is Bad, in all capital letters, no room for gray. But that’s not how life works. There’s a lot of personal judgment involved, and he encouraged me to use that judgment and just live life.”

She looks askance at him. “Does that make sense?”

“I think so.” He says. It will make sense, once he thinks on it a little more deeply. For now, he’s just happy she seems more relaxed, more comfortable standing here in his kitchen with him. “So...what kind of judgment call is having sex with your ex-boss?”

She laughs, bright and infectious and warm as the light that has been slowly creeping into the room, warming the floors and stretching long fingers across the kitchen.

“We’ll see, but it was pretty great sex, so I’m feeling good about it,” she says, cocking her head to the side, almost coquettish. “I probably still should have at least sent you a text first, or something. I’m figuring it out. It’s a work in progress. I’m a work in progress; that’s where I’m at.”

“Well, I already told you: I’m here for you, no matter what.” The words are a little easier to say a second time, though he supposes it could just be because they are ensconced in his apartment, and he’s not being thrown off kilter on her doorstep. “Just keep me posted.”

Her face softens. “I know. I will. And thank you.”

They stand like that a while. Rebecca is the first to look away, out to the windows and the morning haze over the city, before meeting his eyes again.

“I really should be going,” she says regretfully. “I do have therapy in a couple of hours and I need to check in on a few things. But I’ll…see you again? In the reasonably near future?”

“Yeah. Sure,” he says, trying to play it cool. Trying to remember what playing it cool is, because he used to be good at it, once. Instead, he’s smiling at Rebecca and she’s smiling at him and they seem to have run out of words and are just being held nicely in the moment. It’s a new sensation, an immersion of complete calm that Nathaniel has rarely known, Mondays notwithstanding.

The moment breaks with his ringtone, signaling his normal start of the day. He flicks it off, but Rebecca is already drawing away, hitching up her purse and fumbling through it.

“Huh, my roommate’s been texting,” she says, pulling out her phone. “Weird. I told her I’d be here and not to wait up because I’d be home really late. She’s sent like three texts asking if I’m dead or if you killed me. I should probably let her know that I’m not—aaand she’s calling. Sorry, I need to take this.”

“Go ahead,” says Nathaniel. “I need to get ready anyways. Do you need to leave immediately?”

Rebecca’s got her phone dangling between two fingers, like her roommate is about to lunge through and bite her. “It seriously depends. I hope you don’t mind....”

“Of course not.” He tries not to look at her directly –it’s a bit stupid, to be disappointed. “I’ll see you around?”

Rebecca’s attention is still mostly on her phone, but she spares a smile for him. “I’ll see you around,” she agrees, before pressing the green talk button and holding it up to her ear. “Hey Heath-er! Yes, I’m not dead. No, Nathaniel didn’t kill me. Yes, I did fall asleep, and _yes_ the axe is unnecessary.”

“What?”

Rebecca shakes her head at him.

“It’s a thing, don’t worry about it,” she returns the phone to her ear. “I’m back, Heather. How was your weekend?”

It’s a little weird, having to make a graceful exit from his own kitchen, but Nathaniel’s not going to push it. It was a good night, they can leave it at that. But it’s Monday and, good night or not, he needs to get ready for work.

He takes a few minutes to check the shower settings, trying to test if Rebecca made any alterations with unintended consequences. By the time he hears his apartment door snap shut, the small twinge in his chest is still present, but it’s not too bad; he’s already started his mental preparations for what should be a very productive workday. She has her own things to do and he can respect that. He can consider their exchange later. He just needs a few minutes to calibrate, get his mind focused and ready to deal with the incoming grind.

…only then the door to the bathroom opens instead, and there are footsteps, and before Nathaniel can do more than turn towards the shower door it’s being yanked open and Rebecca slips right in, _sans_ clothing and smirking mischievously.

“You know what? That was silly.  We’ve still got…what, an hour? That’s plenty of time.” She presses into him, her arms slipping around his waist and resting above his hip bones, raising goosebumps. “This is a nice shower. You have good taste in, uh, tile? I guess? Is your offer to show me how to work the fiddly bits still on the table?”

The part of him that was gearing up tells him that he should be annoyed—his morning routine is usually timed down to the minute and anything they do will _definitely_ disrupt that.

“Yep, it’s still on. Totally, completely on,” confirms Nathaniel, his hands skimming around her back, kneading circles at her hips and near the base of her spine, bringing her impossibly closer.

Whatever, he can adjust.

“Okay, good. I mean, I was trying to be considerate, like seriously, but if we’re gonna be up this horribly early, at least we can have a little more fun.”

“So you wasted my hot water for nothing?”

She scoffs. “Please, I was barely here five minutes. I didn’t even steam up the mirrors properly.”

He groans and kisses her. She returns it enthusiastically, going on her toes to bury her hands in his hair, scrabbling for a grip.

She hums with pleasure and breaks away, a little breathless. “Good, this is good. Now you can show me how this stupid shower works.”

“It’s not that difficult,” he says, bending down to catch her mouth again, sweeping her hair out of her face, smoothing down her neck until his thumbs brush against her clavicle. “Seriously. There’s just two main functions. Heat and pressure.”

“Ooh,” she sighs, letting him crowd her to the back shower wall, still under the spray. “Mhmm. Yeah. Well, the heat’s just fine --let’s talk about keeping up the pressure.”

 


End file.
